Ready, set, GO!
Viñales focuses on self-improvement
Maverick Viñales spent the five days of testing in Qatar working on himself as a rider and trying to fix the faults that have hampered him over the last few seasons.
Sure, he was very quick and broke Marc Marquez’s record on his way to second overall, but that wasn’t really his main focus. His attention was more on nailing race starts. All too often Viñales has dropped down the order in the early stages of a race and by the time he finds his rhythm, it’s too late to challenge for the podium and victory. Yamaha’s lack of top speed doesn’t help things either. Remarkably, Viñales completed 15 practice starts in the mornings of the two active test days. He likely did more at the end of the day once the clock had stopped as well. “Finally, we are starting quite fast, all the Yamahas start similar, but we need to start much faster to compete,” Viñales said. “That is what we’re looking for, not just to be on a good level, we want to make a difference at the start.” Viñales delivered impressive laptimes on long runs with a full tank, too – again showcasing the hard work being done to fix his early lap woes. The new chassis made him feel comfortable, whilst his rhythm is heading in the right direction. Fabio Quartararo also beat the lap record in third, while Franco
‘We need to start much faster to compete’
Morbidelli was fourth to complete Yamaha’s impressive form at the top. Valentino Rossi improved to 11th overall and ended just 0.810s off the pace compared to 1.435s from the previous week’s test.